


Scare You to Life

by ellacj



Series: 52 Weeks of Swan Queen [3]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Angst and Tragedy, Baby Regina, F/F, Mild Gore, emma will show up in part two promise, just a bit in the beginning, like it's super brief, part one of two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-16
Updated: 2015-01-16
Packaged: 2018-03-07 18:37:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3178883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellacj/pseuds/ellacj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."</p><p>-Franklin D. Roosevelt</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scare You to Life

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a rather complex piece and I couldn't fit everything I needed to into a oneshot without making it too long, so the conclusion to this piece will be posted next Thursday as my submission for Week 4.

She’s five years old.

It’s her fifth birthday, to be more exact. Her mother says she’s ready; says it’s important for her to know her fears. Her _weaknesses_. Regina clutches her leg tightly but Cora shoves her off in disgust as she flicks her wand and the lock disintegrates before them and door to the wardrobe falls open. And it walks out – Regina’s greatest fear. Her _boggart_ , Mother calls it.

It’s a woman. She’s tall and she’s blonde, and her eyes are a striking bright green. Regina stares in wonder at the beautiful woman before her that for some reason, she’s afraid of. But just when she’s about to step forward, four slashes appear on the woman’s stomach and she topples to the floor, blood trickling from her slack jaw as the light fades from her eyes and she writhes on Mother’s polished oak floors.

“Mother, make it stop doing that!” she shrieks through thick, hot tears, tugging on her mother’s cloak until, with a sigh of resignation, Cora lifts her wand and sets the creature alight. When the screams finally die out and Regina removes the tiny hands tightly pressed to her ears, there’s a pile of ash on the floor and her mother shaking her head with obvious disappointment.

“I thought you could handle it.”

 

When she’s eleven years old, her parents send her to a magic school across the ocean somewhere in Britain. There’s a perfectly good school just outside Boston, but Cora won’t hear it. Regina needs to go to The Best School with The Best Professors. She always needs The Best. Frankly, she doesn’t care where she goes, as long as she doesn’t have to live with her mother anymore.

Cora apparates them both to the station where Regina will board the Hogwarts train, hands her a ticket, and disappears again without so much as a goodbye. Regina sighs and glances at the ticket in her head, looking around in a fruitless search for Platform 9¾. However, another scan of the area shows her a girl pushing a trolley loaded with all the similar things to Regina’s.

“Excuse me!” she calls, hurrying over to the girl. “Can you tell me how to get to Platform 9¾?”

The girl smiles, nodding her head and causing her ginger curls to bounce slightly. “Follow me.” She’s English – which really shouldn’t be a surprise, considering they’re in a train station in London. The girl pushes her trolley forward, Regina following behind her, until she passes straight through the solid brick wall between Platforms 9 and 10. Eyes wide, Regina hesitantly follows her through the wall. “Whoa,” she breathes as she comes out on a Platform full of wizards, shooting spells and magical objects in every direction without fear of Muggle interference.

“It’s pretty fantastic, huh?” the girl says with a smile. “I’m Zelena, by the way.”

“Regina.”

“Why don’t you sit with me on the train? I bet we both could use a friend.”

Regina grins. “Okay.”

 

Mother sends Regina a long, angry letter when she hears about the Sorting.

 _No child of mine will be a filthy Hufflepuff_ , she says, and Regina can practically hear Cora’s voice in her head shouting the hurtful words. But she’s drunk – no, she’s high on freedom, and for once in her life she finally feels like she belongs somewhere. Besides, she really loves her black-and-yellow tie. Zelena’s a Slytherin, but she assures her they’ll still be good friends despite being in different houses. Regina’s glad of that; she’s not having much luck finding other friends.

She can’t remember the names of all the other first-year girls in her dorm, but she thinks the one who can’t stop talking is Anna and the quiet girl reading a book by the light of her wand is Mulan. Ingrid, one of their house prefects, called for lights out an hour ago but clearly that’s not a rule that’s followed nor enforced.

She sighs and curls up, the sound of Anna’s never-ending babbling slowly lulling her to sleep.

 

“We learned about boggarts today,” Zelena says as the two of them walk around the castle grounds in the warm afternoon sun. “Professor Nolan says we may get to see one next week. Of course, I’ve already seen mine, but I’m still rather nervous.”

Regina smiles up at her – Zelena’s become something of an older sister to her lately, and it’s nice to have her around even when being in different houses. She wonders if she’ll be staying at school for Christmas. “I’ve seen mine too,” she mentions, not noticing that Zelena’s eyebrows shoot up into her hairline.

“You have?”

“My mother showed it to me when I was a child.” Regina shrugs. “Didn’t yours do the same?”

Zelena slowly shakes her head. “I saw it by accident. One got into our house before my second year. Your mother really did that to you?”

“She said all children had to see it.”

“She lied.”

“Oh.” They walk in silence for a bit, the conversation a bit too heavy for such young minds to comprehend.

“What was it?”

“Hm?”

Zelena coughs. “Your boggart. I’ll tell you mine.”

Regina shifts uneasily on her feet. “Maybe.”

There’s another long silence during which they sit down on a bench to relieve themselves of the weight of their schoolbooks.

“It’s my father,” Zelena says quietly.

Regina nods. She doesn’t say anything; she knows exactly what it’s like to be afraid of a parent. Frankly, she’s surprised her boggart doesn’t take the form of her mother. “Mine’s a woman. It’s one I’ve never met before – and she’s dying. I don’t know what it means.”

Zelena’s eyebrows knit themselves together in thought. “That’s really strange. You know what you should do, you should ask Belle to help you out.”

“Who’s Belle?”

“She’s the library assistant – she’s a fifth year. You could ask her if there’s any books that could help you.”

“Maybe…”

“She won’t tell anyone or anything,” Zelena assures her. “She’s super nice.”

Regina smiles, shaking her head in disbelief of the sheer amount of caring Zelena has for her. She wonders briefly if this is what it’s like to have a sister. She thinks she likes it very much. “I might go there after supper then.”

Zelena grins. “Good.”

 

Brown curls bounce up and down as Belle leads Regina to a shelf near the wall. “I remember reading about this,” she muses as they walk. “It’s not in any book about boggarts though.” She stops abruptly, and reaches up to pull a book off of the shelf. “It was in a divination book.”

Regina takes the thick volume, brushing the dust off the cover. _The Seeing Eye: Year Two_. “What does divination have to do with my boggart?”

“It’s all very complicated. The book can explain it much better than I can, trust me.” Belle frowns. “That’s a fourth year textbook, but you seem smart to me. Just let me know if you need any help.” She smiles, resting a hand on Regina’s shoulder. “Come on, let’s get you all checked out.”

 

Regina’s poring over the textbook Belle gave her that night, after taking nearly twenty minutes to finally figure out the spell to conjure the ball of light at the tip of her wand (maybe Mulan had to help her, but so what? The girl’s way ahead of their curriculum). She flips to the pages Belle pointed out to her and is squinting her eyes at the page and stopping way too frequently to look up words in the wizards’ dictionary she got at Belle’s recommendation.

Basically what she’s gleaned so far is that she’s got something called an imprinted boggart. It happens when two people make such a strong bond that it resonates throughout their entire lives, manifesting in many different places before the two even meet. Apparently it’s very rare for something like this to happen. She sighs. She reads on, stomach tightening as she takes in the words she doesn’t even need to look up.

_Often times an imprinted boggart is a way to see one’s destiny. When a person has an imprinted boggart it can usually be assumed that their fear will be realized sometime in their future, resulting in such pain that it stays with them both before and after meeting the other person._

Regina swallows. This woman, whoever she is, is going to die. And it’s going to make Regina hurt so much that it hurts even now, when she’s eleven years old. But that’s okay.

She didn’t need to sleep tonight.

She sighs. Who is this woman, anyhow? A friend? A long-lost relative? Maybe – and this really makes Regina’s skin crawl – they’re going to fall in love? She shudders. She’s never going to fall in love; she knows that even now. Not after all those times hearing her mother’s cold voice telling her _love, my darling Regina, is weakness_. And somehow that gentle, motherly way that she says _darling_ makes it all okay.

Drawing her knees up to her chest, Regina sets the book aside. She considers extinguishing the light on the tip of her wand but decides against it – who knows what strange people she might fall in love with in the dark?

“Regina?” a voice grumbles to her right. “Are you done reading that?”

“Yes,” Regina whispers. She’s hardly surprised to hear her voice breaking.

“Then why is your light still on?”

She pauses. “I’m just a little bit scared,” she admits as quietly as possible.

There’s a pause, then a rustling of blankets and Mulan stands up from her bed to go sit on Regina’s. “Of what?”

“The book I was reading. It scared me. It’s nothing, really.”

Mulan frowns, placing a hand over Regina’s pale and trembling one. “It’s not nothing,” she murmurs. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Regina quickly shakes her head. This isn’t something she can talk about with just anyone.

“Okay.” But Mulan doesn’t get up; she stays sitting there with a comforting grip on Regina’s hand until eventually they both start to relax. Regina doesn’t even notice her get up and go back to her own bed. She’s too busy falling asleep.

 

Years go by and Regina keeps a sharp eye out for the woman in her fears, but by the time she leaves Hogwarts she still hasn’t met her. She impressed the divination professor in her fourth year, and everyone in her class – except for Mulan. The stoic girl had seen the copy of _The Seeing Eye: Year Two_ under Regina’s mattress, pulled out almost every night for seven years.

Coincidentally, the library’s copy seemed to have gone missing.

It was mysteriously returned the day Regina left Hogwarts with an unsigned note to Belle, the now full-time librarian, that read simply, _Thank you_.

Rumor has it Belle knew exactly who it was from.

After leaving Hogwarts, Regina went back home to Boston – only to walk straight into an enormous fight with the mother she hadn’t seen in seven years. Following the fight she packed her bags and drove north for several hours before coming upon a little town called Storybrooke and running into someone she hadn’t seen in a long while.

Regina and Zelena bought an apartment together a week later.

And now, seventeen years later and living in an enormous mayoral mansion, Regina didn’t even think twice before inviting Zelena to join her.

Yes, things are going well in Storybrooke. She’s got a good job, she’s living with her best friend, and the best part – she hasn’t spoken a single word to her mother since she left all those years ago.

And then there’s Henry.

Her sweet, beautiful Henry, who carries all the love and joy in his heart that she can give him. Her sweet, beautiful Henry, who measures his height in the kitchen every year on his birthday and laughs with his mother and his auntie Zelena every time he blows out the candles on his birthday cake. Her sweet, beautiful Henry, who ran away just after his tenth birthday and left the two of them alone and distressed. Her sweet, beautiful Henry, who came back with a woman he called his mother. Regina stops short and stares at the woman coming up her walk, blinking rapidly, trying to decipher if it’s really her. She’s tall and she’s blonde, and her eyes are a striking bright green. Regina stares in horror at the beautiful woman before her that for some reason…

she’s afraid of losing.

**Author's Note:**

> So I know that this part wasn't actually all that Swan Queen (part 2 will have a lot of that don't worry), but the setup is super important. Also I got really excited about exploring Regina's friendships with other characters that she doesn't really interact with all that much, so I threw in Zelena, Mulan, and Belle as the main people she interacts with at Hogwarts. Also I just really like writing innocent fetus Regina. Thus, this was born. And now you all have a full seven days to prepare for intense tragedy. My apologies in advance.


End file.
